The first documentation of static electricity dates back to 600 BCE. Even after 2,600 years’ worth of tiny shocks, however, researchers couldn’t fully explain how rubbing two objects together causes ...

A century after Nikola Tesla sketched a turbine with no blades, researchers are now using that same counterintuitive design to pull useful power out of static electricity. The latest experiments pair ...

Dry air from Arctic front creates perfect conditions for unexpected zaps.

Scientists at Northwestern University may have figured out why walking on carpet in your socks, petting your furry friend, or rubbing a balloon on your hair creates static electricity. In a new study, ...

Northwestern University scientists have made a new contribution to understanding a long-standing phenomenon called static electricity. In their most recent research, the researchers found that such ...

Could detecting static electricity be a factor in explaining why treehopper insects have evolved such bizarre body shapes? That is the hypothesis put forward in a new research paper published in ...

The imbalance of charges that takes place with this fun phenomenon typically happens when two different materials come into contact and then are separated. In the experience, one of the materials may ...

Butterflies and moths collect so much static electricity whilst in flight, that pollen grains from flowers can be pulled by static electricity across air gaps of several millimetres or centimetres.

For centuries, static electricity has been the subject of intrigue and scientific investigation. Now, researchers from the Waitukaitis group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) ...

Ticks can be attracted across gaps of air much larger than themselves by the static their hosts naturally accumulate, likely making it much easier for the creatures to latch onto hosts, University of ...